Summary: On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, right-wing activist
David Horowitz claimed that "[t]here are 50,000 professors" who are
"anti-American" and "identify with the terrorists." There
are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track full-time university professors
in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers are accurate, that means approximately
one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track college and university professors
is a terrorist sympathizer.

According to statistics
from the Department of Education, there are just over 400,000 tenured and tenure-track
full-time university professors* in the United States. If Horowitz's numbers
are accurate, that means approximately one out of every eight tenured or tenure-track
college and university professors is a terrorist sympathizer.

From the March 2 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country:

MICHAEL
SMERCONISH (guest host): David Horowitz, you wrote a book, your new book
where you expose this on college campuses. Do you think what we're talking
about now is symptomatic of what's going on across the country or is this
an aberration?

HOROWITZ: There are 50,000 professors with the views
of [fellow Scarborough Country guest and Citizens for Legitimate
Government founder Michael] Rectenwald and [Colorado high school teacher]
Jay Bennish, who are anti-American, they're radicals, they identify with the
terrorists, they think of them as freedom fighters. It's a huge danger
for the country. And I tell you, if there was a Christian teacher who was
ranting in that way against abortion in the classroom, they would be toast.

Bennish is accused of issuing,
during a class, what Horowitz has described
as "a Communist political rant on the evils of America, capitalism and
George Bush in that order." Bennish has been suspended
from his job pending an investigation; Horowitz wrote: "May his suspension
last a long time and be a warning to other teachers who think that abusing their
students serves a higher cause."

*Tenured and tenure-track professorships are, according to Horowitz, the
positions of significance on college and university campuses. He wrote in an
April 2003 column
for FrontPageMag.com, of which he is editor-in-chief: "Now it is virtually
impossible for a vocal conservative to be hired for a tenure-track position
on a faculty anywhere, or to receive tenure if so hired. The conservative faculty
members I encounter who have achieved this feat, invariably tell me that they
were forced to keep their political orientation to themselves until they achieved
tenure. Alternatively, they were hired and tenured twenty years ago before the
left secured its grip on the hiring process."